Multidistance diffuse correlation spectroscopy for simultaneous estimation of blood flow index and optical properties

Traditionally, diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) measures microvascular blood flow by fitting a physical model to the measurement of the intensity autocorrelation function from a single source-detector pair. This analysis relies on the accurate knowledge of the optical properties, absorption, and reduced scattering coefficients of the medium. Therefore, DCS is often deployed together with diffuse optical spectroscopy. We present an algorithm that employs multidistance DCS (MD-DCS) for simultaneous measurement of blood flow index, as well as an estimate of the optical properties of the tissue. The algorithm has been validated through noise-free and noise-added simulated data and phantom measurements. A longitudinal in vivo measurement of a mouse tumor is also shown. MD-DCS is introduced as a stand-alone system for small source-detector separations (< 2 cm) for noninvasive measurement of microvascular blood flow. (C) 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)